Viewpoint: Can yoga ‘reprogram’ our DNA? Don’t bet on it

One of the most persistent narratives latched on to by advocates of “integrative medicine” is that the “mind” can somehow “heal” the body. Sometimes, the claim is that such interventions work through “powerful placebo” effects. Sometimes it involves the abuse of emerging science, such overblown claims about what can be accomplished through epigenetic modifications of DNA and gene expression.

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Mind-body therapies, such as mindfulness-based therapies, are very attractive because they are low cost, don’t involve pharmaceuticals, and, above all, provide a sense of control to the patient. Indeed, as ever more rigorous clinical trials find that most of the “unconventional” therapies (i.e., quackery) that “integrative medicine” integrates with conventional medicine are elaborate placebos, proponents of integrative medicine increasingly fall back to pointing to modalities like yoga, tai chi, and the like and “mindfulness.”

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[Placebo effects can be] misrepresented as the “power of the mind over the body.” You can see how mindfulness and other mind-body interactions are just as attractive, because many of them involves actual thinking and meditating. Unfortunately, the science does not (as yet) support many of the overblown claims made for these practices. It’s not clear whether it ever will. Certainly it’s unlikely that they “reprogram” our DNA.

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: Yawn. Another study tries to convince us that mind-body interventions can “reprogram our DNA.” It fails.